Star Citizen: Chris Robert`s new space sim (the Wing Commander guy)

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Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,100
467
126
I do have to agree that the costs are rising pretty fast with the recent acquisition of some of the Crytek staff. They may have actually been a good deal in some sense as some of them may have simply jumped to be continued to be employed instead of dealing with looking at the market and as such may have taken a pay cut even from their Crytek pay rates.

That said a lot of the costs are not permanent long-term costs as a lot of the studios are on contract for certain work and once that work is done, they are no longer an expense (like the 3D imaging and motion capture work that just happened for instance).

I think they do need to be careful about too much delay at this time. As they have said some of the mechanics in the FPS need to get out there into the alpha play testing so they can start collecting all the data they need to make proper balance changes soon in order for Squadron 42 to still make its planned release date (I don't think they want to miss the Holiday sales just like any other game studio, but they might have to push back to the Summer sales if they don't get FPS out very soon).
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
I do have to agree that the costs are rising pretty fast with the recent acquisition of some of the Crytek staff. They may have actually been a good deal in some sense as some of them may have simply jumped to be continued to be employed instead of dealing with looking at the market and as such may have taken a pay cut even from their Crytek pay rates.

That said a lot of the costs are not permanent long-term costs as a lot of the studios are on contract for certain work and once that work is done, they are no longer an expense (like the 3D imaging and motion capture work that just happened for instance).

I think they do need to be careful about too much delay at this time. As they have said some of the mechanics in the FPS need to get out there into the alpha play testing so they can start collecting all the data they need to make proper balance changes soon in order for Squadron 42 to still make its planned release date (I don't think they want to miss the Holiday sales just like any other game studio, but they might have to push back to the Summer sales if they don't get FPS out very soon).

Yup. That's my biggest complaint/concern right now....SQ42, which is 90% of what I care about, gets delayed because of FPS issues.

I don't think we'll see SQ42 until 2016.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
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91
Yup. That's my biggest complaint/concern right now....SQ42, which is 90% of what I care about, gets delayed because of FPS issues.

I don't think we'll see SQ42 until 2016.

Squadron 42 is also where 90% of my interest lies. I'm hopeful that since the majority of the discussed FPS issues reside on MP back-end stuff that the SP campaign isn't facing the same kind of roadblock.

RSI has been pretty quiet about Squadron 42 compared to everything else, though, which leaves me a bit nervous. We're not really seeing much in the way of level screens or demo reels. If it releases 1Q or 2Q 2016 it's not going to be the end of the world for me, but I would really have a hard time maintaining confidence if that turned out to be the case without some serious evidence showing SQ42 progress.
 
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JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
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He did hire a bunch of guys when Crytek was about to go bankrupt. They cant be cheap.

I wish he did avoid California all together. it is a hostile place for a business his size. Taxes are brutal and California regulations continue to squeeze and drive corporations out of the state.

Redmond, WA (MS HQ) and Austin would have been just fine for his dream to be accomplished. I dont have any issues with Chris Roberts brother being in England leading the development of the single player version (Squadron 42).


Yes thats all true except the part about when gearing up a large creative workforce you go to LA and if you have money you go to santa monica.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126

I wont read too much into 1 guy leaving but if we see more and more then we know something is seriously wrong. And sorry croberts is a creative guy but he was fired off of his last game project and lots of his film projects lost tons of money and his last film never was finished. So while some people think about wing commander and how great that was I see something very different in the tea leaves.
 

preslove

Lifer
Sep 10, 2003
16,754
63
91
This games is going to be the biggest kickstarter clusterf**k for a very long time. I'm glad I never bought any ships. The feature creep started to smell like a fiasco. I can't believe that idiot decided to add an entire FPS section to a space combat simulator :mad:

It's really disappointing. I wanted a good space sim with a story component.
 
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rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
I wont read too much into 1 guy leaving but if we see more and more then we know something is seriously wrong. And sorry croberts is a creative guy but he was fired off of his last game project and lots of his film projects lost tons of money and his last film never was finished. So while some people think about wing commander and how great that was I see something very different in the tea leaves.

But it isn't one guy....Travis Day just left (went to Blizzard) a week ago too. Travis was the lead guy on the FPS module from what I could tell (when sh*t started going badly, they sent him to Colorado to oversee Ilfonic directly).

This will be something to keep an eye on.
 

preslove

Lifer
Sep 10, 2003
16,754
63
91
No one piece of news is bad, in and of itself, but there has been a trend for a long time. The feature creep is what kept me from backing. They should have focused on making a space sim. All that money rushing in lead them to try to make an impossible game.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126
But it isn't one guy....Travis Day just left (went to Blizzard) a week ago too. Travis was the lead guy on the FPS module from what I could tell (when sh*t started going badly, they sent him to Colorado to oversee Ilfonic directly).

This will be something to keep an eye on.


ouch for some reason I mixed the 2 guys up. Yeah this thing is gonna crash hard.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
No one piece of news is bad, in and of itself, but there has been a trend for a long time. The feature creep is what kept me from backing. They should have focused on making a space sim. All that money rushing in lead them to try to make an impossible game.


This is kind of where I'm torn. I've always wanted a space sim where spaceships were scaled, dynamic, real-world objects, and where a first-person perspective was how you interacted with the world around you.

In every other game, the ship is nothing more than a static model or a loaded level. Click on it and magically appear in the cockpit. I'm bored of that entire concept.

I want a universe where immersion is unbroken, and you see through the eyes of the character in every step you take.

I don't want to click a few buttons, dock at a space station, and interact with a spreadsheet. I want to land my ship on the pad, climb down the ladder, walk through the front door and interact with a living, scaled environment on the inside.

Star Citizen is the FIRST space sim that has ever offered that approach. Is it a massive technical hurdle? Yes.

I would gladly give up my $75 for the promise of a game of this scope. If it doesn't happen....well, $75 isn't sh*t. If it does, I'll finally get the space sim I've always wanted.

I'm not a fanboi either way...I just really hope it happens. People have a right to be critical of Chris Roberts. He obviously has a vision of a game that parallels what I've always wanted, and a lot of other people. I don't think any other PC game has had this wide of a scope. The problem is that implementation of pioneering visions takes immense time and resources, and even though $84M sounds like a lot, it isn't.

At some point he will have to compromise and draw a line. I think time will be his enemy. He can't drag this community on indefinitely. With any project, you have to produce the deliverable. You can go overbudget and over deadline within a window of reason, but when you go past that, you lose the confidence of the stakeholders. IF, however, after all of this you can create something truly superb, despite the above (and history has proved this time and time again), everybody will forget about the controversy and the conflict, and only remember the masterpiece.

I guess we'll see how it turns out.
 
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Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
Nothing stops them from creating the technology that isn't there.

There's something to be said for development NOW vs. then. Now, he has access to an engine that has been tuned for the better part of 22 years. Unlike games of the past, he doesn't have to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours developing a 3D render / AI / lighting / physics engine. He only has to modify it - with the help of some of the brightest minds in the industry.

It's already capable (with what sounds like their rollback to pre-CryEngine2 terrain precision) of massive level rendering, AI navigation mechanics / state functions, and industry best lighting and physics models.

Somebody else spent tens of thousands of hours and millions of dollars developing the render tech. They just have to work it to their needs and develop the game.

I know it's an oversimplification, but we can't compare the hurdles of what his approaches faced in the past to the tools and resources he's working with now.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126
There's something to be said for development NOW vs. then. Now, he has access to an engine that has been tuned for the better part of 22 years. Unlike games of the past, he doesn't have to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours developing a 3D render / AI / lighting / physics engine. He only has to modify it - with the help of some of the brightest minds in the industry.

It's already capable (with what sounds like their rollback to pre-CryEngine2 terrain precision) of massive level rendering, AI navigation mechanics / state functions, and industry best lighting and physics models.

Somebody else spent tens of thousands of hours and millions of dollars developing the render tech. They just have to work it to their needs and develop the game.

I know it's an oversimplification, but we can't compare the hurdles of what his approaches faced in the past to the tools and resources he's working with now.

cryengine is a great thing. But how you scale that to 1000 people on a server and dynamic exploding ships with interiors and all other kinds of shit I dont know. That link I posted earlier talked in great detail about this very thing and its not looking good.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
cryengine is a great thing. But how you scale that to 1000 people on a server and dynamic exploding ships with interiors and all other kinds of shit I dont know. That link I posted earlier talked in great detail about this very thing and its not looking good.


You bring up a good point. We haven't seen Cryengine used in any kind of MMO context, and that seems to be where they're really hanging up.

As much info as we're getting from RSI, we aren't getting it in the form of "when will we get Squadron 42."

We're talking about AAA game development now...where cutscenes are $2K+ PER SECOND. $84M wouldn't be enough to put out GTAV, where 90% of the environment isn't even interactive. He proposes to produce 100 levels for the SP campaign, which is only 1/2 of the scope of the game.

It's hard to believe that what he's working with is enough. To create a game with the scale that's being presented, I could easily see $200M being the target.
 
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irishScott

Lifer
Oct 10, 2006
21,562
3
0
This games is going to be the biggest kickstarter clusterf**k for a very long time. I'm glad I never bought any ships. The feature creep started to smell like a fiasco. I can't believe that idiot decided to add an entire FPS section to a space combat simulator :mad:

It's really disappointing. I wanted a good space sim with a story component.

If you're just hearing about the FPS component now you weren't paying attention, It's been advertised since the kickstarter campaign. If there's any feature creep it was there from the get-go.

And personally I like the idea of being able to board enemy starships.
 
Feb 4, 2009
35,287
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As I said before I'm glad they put it on hold. The videos of it didn't impress me that much. Looked like COD pretty but no substance.
 

ToySoldier

Member
Dec 17, 2003
186
0
76
Squadron 42 is also where 90% of my interest lies. I'm hopeful that since the majority of the discussed FPS issues reside on MP back-end stuff that the SP campaign isn't facing the same kind of roadblock.

RSI has been pretty quiet about Squadron 42 compared to everything else, though, which leaves me a bit nervous. We're not really seeing much in the way of level screens or demo reels. If it releases 1Q or 2Q 2017 it's not going to be the end of the world for me, but I would really have a hard time maintaining confidence if that turned out to be the case without some serious evidence showing SQ42 progress.

Back in March, CR noted that Chapter One should be ready by Jan 1 but I'm assuming the 1st half of 2016:


http://m.ign.com/articles/2015/03/1...or-says-hitting-75-million-goal-is-liberating
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126
If you're just hearing about the FPS component now you weren't paying attention, It's been advertised since the kickstarter campaign. If there's any feature creep it was there from the get-go.

And personally I like the idea of being able to board enemy starships.

I bought in day 1 and don't recall any fps addition. He feature creeped the hell out of this thing. Just look at then latest feature creep - serve drinks on a space bus $400. This guy is bilking the community. There are some people who have spent 30k on this game. That's insane and croberts is eating it up.
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
I bought in day 1 and don't recall any fps addition. He feature creeped the hell out of this thing. Just look at then latest feature creep - serve drinks on a space bus $400. This guy is bilking the community. There are some people who have spent 30k on this game. That's insane and croberts is eating it up.
I'm not sure he's bilking the community. But he does seem to have trouble knowing when to say when. It's like he needs to be referred to a gambling addiction helpline or something.:eek:
 

preslove

Lifer
Sep 10, 2003
16,754
63
91
If you're just hearing about the FPS component now you weren't paying attention, It's been advertised since the kickstarter campaign. If there's any feature creep it was there from the get-go.

And personally I like the idea of being able to board enemy starships.

I read about it when it was a stretch goal. It was one of many red flags that kept me from backing. That and how detailed the ship models were going to be, with every thruster independently being modelled and then the interiors will also be real? For dozens of ships? It sounded like something too complicatedcomplicated to run on high specced systems.

They should have made a single player campaign/open world space combat sim. Now I could see that not even coming out.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
I think people are confusing 1st-person camera with FPS multiplayer.

FP character camera was always part of the design, and by default, using weapons makes it an FPS.

The Star Marine FPS multiplayer was the new feature, and it's what they're having issues with. It's essentially its own game, and I don't really care if it's included or not (obviously a lot of people do, so I'm not deriding it).

From my understanding reading the RSI copies, the FPS Star Marine component issues don't really have much to do with FPS use in the rest of the game.
 

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
You bring up a good point. We haven't seen Cryengine used in any kind of MMO context, and that seems to be where they're really hanging up.

As much info as we're getting from RSI, we aren't getting it in the form of "when will we get Squadron 42."

We're talking about AAA game development now...where cutscenes are $2K+ PER SECOND. $84M wouldn't be enough to put out GTAV, where 90% of the environment isn't even interactive. He proposes to produce 100 levels for the SP campaign, which is only 1/2 of the scope of the game.

It's hard to believe that what he's working with is enough. To create a game with the scale that's being presented, I could easily see $200M being the target.

There's actually several MMO's with decent player bases (enough to get some productive feedback on netcode) using CryEngine.

Aeon is one example. However, I believe they forked it off, so their netcode may be their own IP.